Town Square

State unemployment rate climbs to 12.4 percent

Original post made
on Sep 27, 2010

California's unemployment rate climbed to 12.4 percent in August, which is up from 12.3 percent the previous month, according to the latest figures released by the state's Employment Development Department.

Congress is making the situation worse because their legislation is causing a lot of uncertainty about taxes and costs, which makes businesses nervous about hiring.

For example, 78% of small business owners expect their business costs to rise due to Healthcare Reform. Nearly 50% say this makes them concerned about hiring new employees. Web Link

And now Congress says they're waiting until after the election to decide whether to extend the Bush tax cuts.

How can businesses make hiring decisions today when they don't know what their taxes and healthcare costs are going to be next year?

Consumers are waiting to find out how much taxes they're going to owe next year before making a big purchase, like buying a house or car. They want to make sure they can afford it.

Investors wait to know whether taxes on dividends and capital gains are going to rise before making stock market and other investments.

After the financial meltdown, the President and Congress could have helped the economy heal by focusing their attention on the economy only. Instead, they undertook radical steps to transform healthcare and energy and never bothered to address critical issues like taxes, social security funding, and entitlement reform.

Uncertainty about taxes and costs paralyzes businesses, consumers, and investors.

This has been made worse by our electing Arnold to run our State. He has no experience and it showed. He could not get the GOPers to do anything except saying no. We would have an even worse problem with Whitman. We need to elect Jerry Brown who knows how to get the state working again.

Arnold tried initially but ran into a brick wall with the Legislature.

Jerry Brown is just a retread who tries to reinvent himself every 4-8 years so he can avoiding returning to private life and actually having to contribute to society. Every time he says he's a "public servant" my skin crawls because he's just an egocentric politician who wants to serve his ego and not the taxpayers.